516 1 FRANCE 
kD THE WAR 

'J. MARK BALDWIN 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



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FRANCE 
AND THE WAR 

AS SEEN BY AN AMERICAN 



BY 



JAMES MARK BALDWIN 




D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
NEW YORK 1916 



^^ 






'^'i>\ 



COPTBIGHT, 1916, BT 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



Printed in the United States of America 

FEl'26'i9l6 

■:^CI.A42091« 



PREFATORY NOTE 

Having lived in France the better part of each of 
the last six years, I have had unusual opportunities of 
observation by reason of the great hospitality shown 
me in scientific and literary circles. It is only fair to 
add, also, that my previous and more remote prejudg- 
ments were, in many respects, favorable to Germany, 
because of my sojourn in Berlin and Leipzig as a student. 

J. M. B. 



France, brave foster-sister, hail! 
Thy comrade since our double birth, 
Thy twin Republic greets thee, hail! 
Once more to prove thy boasted power 
To make the distant vision real. 
Wed deed to thought! Reveal again 
Thy soul intrepid, kin to ours — 
Defender of the rights of man! 

(From the author's lines "The Voice of America- 
August 1915," printed in part in The Times.) 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

The position of England in the war has 
been much discussed, although to the un- 
biassed onlooker it seems plain enough, no 
doubt because the matter has been clouded 
by reason of certain charges brought 
against England by Germany. England 
has become Germany's ^^ dearest foe'' in 
this war. As a result the place of France 
and the reasons for French participation 
in the war have remained under certain 
obscurities which, in justice to the French, 
should be cleared up. 

It is remarkable, at the outset, that the 
Germans do not bring any charges against 
France, save the vague one— put forth 
officially late in the game— that France 
had intended to violate the neutrality of 

5 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

Belgium. They confess, on the contrary, 
that it was their own intention to crush 
France utterly in any case. On this show- 
ing, they admit that France was fully 
justified in resisting ; and they admire the 
heroism with which she resisted. There is 
a good deal more in the subject of the 
place of France in the present war than 
this, however ; and certain of the current 
presuppositions on the subject— current in 
the United States at least— are ill- 
founded. I wish to show this in what 
follows. 



My principal object is to show that 
modern France, the France of the Third 
Eepublic, is not a military or martial 
country in either of the two distinct 
senses, moral and political, of the term 
' ' militarism. " It is said, by apologists for 
Germany, that France has a standing 
army larger in proportion to her popula- 
tion than Germany, and that the term of 
compulsory service is longer than in the 
former country. These facts present the 
outward signs of militarism, superficially 
understood. But they do not indicate 
either a military attitude toward life, a 
psychological and moral militarism, so to 
designate it, or an official military attitude 
toward other countries, a political militar- 
ism. They are to be explained as issuing 

9 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

from two general causes and as reflecting 
two great facts in the life of Republican 
France— facts, one of which the French 
have accepted until recently with resigna- 
tion, and the other of which they are only 
now appreciating at its full worth. Both 
have become so prominent and everpres- 
ent to the minds of the people that 
they are fixed in special phrases: the 
*^ German menace" and the ^^ triple en- 
tente." In French opinion, from coach- 
man to minister, from Eoyalist to Radical 
Socialist, the German menace has become, 
since the Tangier incident of 1905, a sort 
of datum of the emotional life, an assump- 
tion that needs no argument, an ever- 
present fact, like the danger of a cholera 
epidemic or the menace of a flood in the 
Seine. And the triple entente, the alli- 
ance with Russia, taken together with the 
understanding with England, has been 
considered, in all educated and well-in- 

10 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

formed circles, the available political 
weapon, the tool of diplomacy, the pledge 
of the preservation not only of the lib- 
erties of France, but of those of all 
Europe. It has insured the superior 
power by which alone military aggression 
could be met. Before 1905, the date of 
the Tangier incident, neither of these 
facts had its true value in popular opinion. 
Although the German menace existed, it 
was not perceived in all its meaning save 
by certain prudent statesmen, like Del- 
casse, who were not, as so many of the 
politicians were, chasing the rainbows of 
international socialism. 

I wish to enlarge a little on these two 
things, especially the former, as explain- 
ing the moral and psychological tolerance 
extended in recent years to the military 
establishment, and justifying the political 
policies by which the ^^ triple entente'' 
was maintained and extended. 

11 



n 



II 

The German menace dates, of course, in 
its present form— speaking as if before 
the present war broke out— from the war 
of 1870, after which France found herself 
in a position of humiliation. She had 
good reason to see, in the terms of the 
treaty of Frankfort a threat of repeated 
aggression and possible extinction. Dur- 
ing the early years of the Republic, how- 
ever, the theories of the Jacobins were 
so ^^ violently pacific," and were to such 
an extent based on international toler- 
ance and brotherhood, that the French 
lost their fear of German aggression and 
also much of their own proper patriotic 
feeling. The sense of security based on 
internationalism was aggravated by the 

15 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

success of the socialistic party in 1902, 
and by the subsequent radical develop- 
ment of theoretical democracy during the 
administration of Combes. 

But the fear and the patriotic feeling 
were both revived by a series of unpro- 
voked diplomatic and military provoca- 
tions which seemed to the French to be 
due, on the one hand, to the German ap- 
preciation of the national insouciance, 
and on the other hand, to German jeal- 
ousy of the cultural successes of France. 

During a series of years, the French 
met this policy of pinpricks with a mod- 
eration, sang-froid, and dignity to which 
all the world testified on the occasion of 
the Agadir incident and during the entire 
Morocco embroglio; the more striking in 
that this incident followed the Tangier 
affair and other events all calculated to 
excite suspicion and arouse resentment. 
Anyone who cares to look up the files of 

16 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

the Temps, the Dehats, the Figaro, during 
those anxious days of 1911, when the 
issues of war and peace were in the bal- 
ance, will find evidence of this. Calm, 
resolute, as in the similar days of last 
July, the French press pointed out rea- 
sons for the aggression, finding in it only 
that specter, the menace Allemande in a 
new form. There was no public excite- 
ment, none of the hysterical display that 
superficial British and American opinion 
sometimes associates with the French. 
Admiration of this fine moderation was 
publicly expressed at certain American 
functions held at Paris at the time. The 
French attitude \7as recognized as show- 
ing a certain stoical resolution, based on 
the anticipation, not then to be fully real- 
ized as it is so horribly now, of the inevi- 
table war. Of the coming war there has 
been no doubt at all since the fall of Del- 
casse in 1905, a sacrifice to Germany. But 
17 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

in 1911 there was a sense of adequate 
preparation, as there had not been in 
1905, a sense of the mastery of the vital 
and material resources of war, which so 
nobly appears today in all the French 
people. 

Soon after came the Saverne affair, 
followed by a remarkable series of pin- 
pricks to French susceptibilities as rep- 
resented by their sympathy for the un- 
fortunate people of Alsace. In certain 
villages, the populace had ventured to 
smile at the arrogance of the Prussian 
military authorities and some had even 
joked at the expense of the strutting Ger- 
man soldier. In the contest that ensued 
between the civil and military authorities, 
the latter were of course victorious : mili- 
tary personages found guilty by the civil 
courts of outrages against the populace 
were freed by Berlin from all penal re- 
sponsibility; and innocent citizens, sus- 
18 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

pected of French sympathies, were 
crushed by the imposing authority of the 
mailed fist. An officer found guilty of 
slashing a cripple with his saber was given 
military justification under cover of 'a 
nominal reproof. These petty tyrannies 
were accomplished by subterfuges which 
show that the methods now employed in 
Belgium are no new discovery. Had not 
the cripple showed himself guilty by try- 
ing to run away? Finally, the famous 
cartoonist and literary man, Hansi, who 
ventured to portray the grotesque side of 
militarism in daily life, had to flee co- 
vertly from the country into France to 
escape a sentence of imprisonment. 

All this pettiness was met by the French 
with good humor, but humor tinged with 
the melancholy of a deep-seated presenti- 
ment. The subtle irony seen in French 
publications of the year 1911-1912, had 
a touch of bitterness and withal of dis- 
19 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

gust. What does it show? was the ques- 
tion asked in those days. The reply was 
not Prussian conceit, coarseness, bragga- 
docio only, but an underlying anti- 
French policy, a smouldering jealousy, an 
unsatiated appetite. French opinion, 
aroused before, was now shocked; its 
native chivalry was outraged. And more 
than this, its conviction of German ani- 
mosity was confirmed. Are such things, 
they asked, as free speech, public criti- 
cism of officials, the rights of the press, 
suppressed in Alsace? Do the Germans 
themselves accept elsewhere such viola- 
tions of the elementary rights of free citi- 
zenship? They were justified in think- 
ing that even the Teutonic thoroughness 
was stretching itself a little in thus pre- 
senting to the gaze of the sensitive 
people across the border such a spectacle 
of the lost territory. 
But the more essential fact was that 
20 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

the French were unable to put themselves 
in the shoes of the Germans, to think as 
the Germans thought. Their mentality 
was different, and the training they had 
received. Since the day of Gambetta, 
the French had been losing respect for 
the military point of view which makes 
the soldier the center of things temporal 
and eternal. They were busy working out 
their theories of democracy and the rights 
of man. They shrugged their shoulders 
in private at the German cochons, the 
people who dressed untidily, left their 
hands uncared for, trod on one's toes in 
summer hotels, talked constantly of their 
nazionales Bewnsstsein, and displayed a 
sort of egoistic religious sentiment which 
flattered their national vanity (I speak as 
the Frenchman would). But they now 
found in this same Germanism something 
to be watched, something allied openly 
with force, something that authorized its 
21 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

apostles to preach conquest and world- 
dominance. This is what the French 
have found growing up in their minds 
these last years, becoming a nightmare as 
every evening paper was found to report 
some new sign of what they now call 
^^bocherie." Since the war broke out, I 
have heard more than once the sentiment : 
*^ Thank God, now we know what is to 
be done." There is no longer the uncer- 
tainty, the hesitation, the dread; these 
have been replaced by the task, the duty. 
What right, does one ask, had France 
to prepare to meet such menace as this? 
The right of any nation to live, to cherish 
its national aspirations, to pursue its 
mission in peace. France found herself 
in living in a fool's paradise, indulging 
in the socialistic dream of universal fra- 
ternity. There had even been a Germano- 
phile movement— or at least a movement 
of imitation— in science, education, and 
22 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

letters, similar to that from which the 
United States has been recently recover- 
ing. But when the ominous clouds ap- 
peared, French patriotism was reborn in 
a day. 

That this represents truthfully the state 
of the French mind at the outbreak of 
the present war, there are abundant ex- 
ternal signs to show: for example, the 
character of recent French governments. 
France has had a socialistic government 
for years. The dominant coalition of 
parties has been professedly antimilitary. 
Every increase in the budget for army or 
navy— increases which have been con- 
tinuous since the Tangier incident— has 
had long and passionate discussion and 
has required overwhelming justification 
from the point of view of the national 
defense. Cabinet after cabinet has felt 
the drift toward disarmament, being 
obliged to pacify the pacificists, so to 
23 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

speak, in respect to the most moderate 
measures of military prudence. The Rad- 
ical Socialists, led by Jean Jaures, out- 
spoken and persistent both in the Cham- 
ber and in their organs, VHumanite and 
La Guerre sociale, have continued the tra- 
dition of Combism. Fortunately, the ris- 
ing tide of nationalism has been more 
than a sufficient antidote. 

The significance of all this is shown 
in the last great struggle of the kind, that 
which took place over the new law re- 
quiring three years of compulsory mili- 
tary service— the loi de trois arts} The 
passage of this law, while not technically 
the cause of the fall of the Barthou cabi- 
net, was practically so, by reason of the 

1 The history of the laws regulating the term of ser- 
vice is itself significant. The term had been reduced 
by successive steps until it stood at two years. The 
return to military prudence and preparation was then 
reflected in this new law restoring the period of three 
years. 

24 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

sharpening and solidifying of the oppo- 
sition which it brought about. Never in 
recent years— never since the Dreyfus 
affair, let us say — has the Republic had 
a time of greater storm and stress than 
during the period of the discussion of this 
measure. Never was the policy of mili- 
tarism as such more plainly and vigor- 
ously condemned; never were those of 
national defense and racial integrity more 
earnestly and forcefully advocated. 
Never was the German menace more elo- 
quently, and withal more convincingly, 
presented to the people of Prance. The 
measure was passed in a great outburst 
of popular feeling. The government had 
staked its existence upon its passage, 
declaring it to be essential to the national 
safety. Here was the German menace 
taking on concrete numerical form; and 
it was such men as Barthou, Leon Bour- 
geois, Alexandre Ribot, Poincare— econ- 

25 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

omists, scholars, statesmen of diverse 
political creeds— who formulated the na- 
tional sentiment, supported by a public 
press which was conducted with unusual 
ability and high patriotism. How the 
wisdom of these men was justified by the 
event ! 

In the subsequent cabinets, dominated 
by extreme radicals, the law of three years 
has remained on the statute books. Its 
former enemies, although in power, have 
not dared to repeal it in the face of the 
national sentiment. Its wisdom was 
finally acknowledged by Doumerge and 
his fellow-ministers, Caillaux et al., 
whether from patriotism or from party 
policy one may entertain a doubt. It had 
come into effective operation when the 
war-cloud burst ; and its immediate effect 
was a considerable increase in the 
army, through the retention of the 
class of men who would otherwise 
26 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

have been released in 1914. Since 
the war began, socialists of the most 
radical type have declared their sat- 
isfaction that the law became effective in 
time. No doubt the martyred Jaures 
would have joined in this view had he 
lived to see the course of events. In the 
present war cabinet, formed from all the 
political parties for the national defense, 
two portfolios are held by well-known 
militant socialists— Guesde and Sembat. 
In no party, moreover, is there any sign 
of disaffection in respect to the conduct 
of the war.^ 



^ The opinions of Guesde and Sembat on the war and 
the future of socialism are to be found in the news- 
papers of February 11 (see the Figaro of that date) ; 
they both gave out interviews outlining their attitude 
in respect to the proposed conference of socialists of 
the alHed nations, held in London during the week of 
February 14. It is to be regretted that the same 
united front has not been presented by the English 
socialists, as may be gathered from the remonstrances 
addressed to Mr. Kier Hardie and his associates of the 

27 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

So far then from indicating a military 
state of mind in the nation at large, the 
will to be a great military power, the 
renewed warlike preparations of France 
in the last decade represent something 
very different— a growing apprehension, 
and with it a reaction against the loose 
unnational liberalism of the democratic 
doctrinaires. Such military precautions 
may have increased the danger of war; 
the increase of armaments usually does 
have such an effect. This was one of the 
arguments of Jaures and others against 
the law of three years. The German 
Chancellor, in fact, made use of the pas- 
sage of this law to support his demand 
for new military credits in Germany. 
But there is every reason to believe that 
this and the other military measures taken 

Independent Labor Party by Mr. Hyndman and by the 
Belgian leader, Vandervelder (see recent issues of 
Humanite). 

28 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

in France were in themselves motived by 
considerations of national defense; it is 
certain, at any rate, they were received 
by the people in this sense. 

Another motive of aggression attrib- 
uted to the French is that of revenge— 
revenge for the loss of Alsace-Lorraine. 
Such a passion of revenge is constantly 
charged to them by what the French 
characterize as the clumsy indulgence of 
patronizing enemies. The Germans find 
in this feeling the sufficient reason of all 
the French military measures. It is so 
generally taken for granted, indeed, as 
being a natural feeling, that the entire 
absence of it before the present war, a 
fact to which I can testify, is more than 
noteworthy. Never have I heard such a 
feeling expressed in any French circle; 
nor have I heard the topic of revenge 
discussed except in historical connections. 
The revanche of the Gambettists, and that 
29 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

of the special prophets of Alsace like 
Deroulede, were discussed with the or- 
dinary French love of analysis and para- 
dox, but not as being a living national 
purpose or motive. The feeling was 
really one of humane pity for the in- 
habitants of the lost provinces and the 
wish that at some future time they might 
be delivered. It was pro-Alsatian more 
than anti-German. So radically unmili- 
tary have their ideals become under the 
Republican regime, that the French 
cannot conceive of happiness or content- 
ment in unfortunate Alsace, under the 
Prussian rule. Of course now, since the 
outbreak of war, the people talk of re- 
venge and the literary men of retribu- 
tion;' it is part of the new war spirit. 

^ Shortly after the outbreak of hostilities copies of 
the treaty of Frankfort were sold on the boulevards; 
and a play, entitled "I'Aube de la Revanche," is now 
(February) being produced in one of the Paris thea- 
ters. 

30 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

But to speak of the French nation as 
having prepared its army and built its 
navy in order to wreak vengeance on Ger- 
many is nothing short of grotesque. The 
motive of revenge in such a form would 
conflict with the profoundest elements of 
the culture of modern France. 

A quite different sentiment, entertained 
by the French people generally, is every- 
where in evidence— that which is di- 
rected against the religious chauvinism 
found associated with German militarism. 
This is to them a form of pretense, of 
religiosity, accompanied by a ridiculous 
inflation of personality. The Kaiser's 
frequent appeals to the Deity on terms 
of equality, and with the suggestion of 
a secret entente^ between himself and 



^ An entente, however, which, through no fault of 

the Kaiser's, does not always produce the results desired. 

His Majesty is reported to have said to his troops 

{Vossische Zeitung, as quoted in the Figaro, February 

31 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

God, illustrate so well what is meant that 
the reader will have no difficulty in recog- 
nizing it. French writers find in this 
religiosity one of the prime factors of 
racial exclusiveness ; to the onlooker it 
offers a real problem in the psychology 
of the military State. Looked at from 
the point of view of French liberalism, 
it proves the Germans to be at a tribal 
stage of political development and re- 
ligious culture alike. Respectful to re- 
ligion always— reverential now, as I am 
to show lower down— the unpolitical 
everyday Frenchman has no patience 
with the form of religion in which the 
Deity identifies his interest exclusively 
with those of a self-elected tribe or race, 
and issues to a ^^ chosen people'' a man- 



17) : "I hope with all my heart we shall be able to 
celebrate the sacred festival of Easter in peace and joy 
at our homes. I call upon God to witness that if this 
is not the case, it will not be my fault." 

32 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

date to conquer and destroy. In Ger- 
many, as all who have lived there know, 
this is not an accidental, local, or super- 
ficial thing. Taught in the schools and 
universities by means of state-edited text- 
books, enforced by church, press, and 
public opinion, equally under state super- 
vision, it has been wrought into the 
national tissue. It is the justification, 
in theory and practice, not only of the 
Germany that now is, but of that which 
is to come— Deutschland ilher ATles. The 
^^ national destiny," gained by alliance 
with the Almighty, is the end that 
justifies the means. The Chancellor 
so declared in reference to the viola- 
tion of the territory of Belgium. With 
this end goes the most varied means: 
the sword, the torch, the bomb, the mine, 
the diplomatic subterfuge. It restores the 
commission of Gideon who slew the ene- 
mies of Jehovah, and that of Elijah who 
33 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

destroyed the prophets and also the ^^high 
places''— the cathedrals, such as they 
were— of Baal. 

In contrast with this, the cosmopolitan- 
ism of French culture shows itself pos- 
sessed of all the benign and pacific marks 
of true toleration. Call it free thought, 
if you will, call it enlightenment, attribute 
it to rationalism or to positivism or to 
socialism, its character remains the same. 
It shudders with horror at the invocation 
of a Deity who spreads His glory by the 
shedding of blood ; and it cannot restrain 
the shrug of contempt for the devotee 
who makes himself the chosen instrument 
of such a Deity. Professor Boutroux 
has declared that a certain brutality is 
inherent in the nature of German na- 
tional culture; we see here, perhaps, the 
reason for it. It finds its prototype in 
the relentlessness of the destroying 
angel of tradition— now taking form in 

34 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

the Uhlan, equipped in German casque 
and mail. No doubt there are many men 
inspired with the zeal of crusaders among 
the hosts that have invaded Belgium and 
France. I think the French feel that the 
great body of the German middle-class 
people look upon themselves and their 
nation as true crusaders, following a di- 
vinely commissioned Gideon; but they 
believe that these are directed in their 
mission by religious egoists and conscious 
hypocrites,^ and the very severity of their 



* This impression of hypocrisy is just now brought 
out in the comments upon the German war circular, 
"Appeal to the Christians of Protestant Churches of the 
French Language/' addressed to "Foreign Protestants 
in Neutral and Hostile Countries," in which Germany 
makes herself champion of Protestant Christianity and 
Christian Missions as against England! One is con- 
strained to ask: How about Catholic Austria, and 
Mohammedan Turkey? Signers of this manifesto, 
among them Eucken, Harnack, and Wundt, must know 
that similar appeals issued in the Orient describe the 
Kaiser as "His Islamic Majesty" who is to impose upon 

35 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

judgment of the military class and of its 
resort to religious cant, shows how far 
removed the French point of view is from 
that of such a militarism. 

As to cosmopolitanism, the French value 
it as being the priceless pacific agency 
of life, the destroyer of racial preju- 
dice, the begetter of sympathetic relation- 
ships among men. But they are coming 
to recognize that in the theory of in- 
ternationalism there are the germs 
of national weakness, since in prac- 
tice it destroys true patriotic feeling 
and produces symptoms of political 
palsy. 

To one who has lived in both countries, 
Germany and France, the contrast be- 
tween them is striking in the extreme; 
and both differ from the complacent but 

Europe the Mohammedan faith now espoused by him. 
The similar cultivation of the favor of the Vatican is 
left to Austria. 

36 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

tolerant provincialism of the English. Not 
only in popular sentiment does the di:ffer- 
ence appear, but in the avowed purposes 
and policies of institutions and social or- 
ganizations of all sorts. The Germans 
declaim against the use of French fash- 
ions; deplore the introduction of French 
words even on menu-cards ; read lectures, 
in the press and by resolution of Ger- 
manic societies, to the Germans in 
America who give their sons and 
daughters un-German names; boycott 
music not made in Germany. I was once 
publicly reproved on a German liner, 
when at the captain's dinner given 
before landing, as the different national 
flags were taken in turn out of the cake 
in the center of the table by admiring 
citizens, I rose, in the absence of any 
English passenger, and waved the Union 
Jack along with the Stars and Stripes. 
*^ There,'' said the officer in charge of the 
37 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

table, ^^is a man who does not love Ger- 
many— (ier Deutscliland nicM liehtJ' 
Not that sort of Germany, certainly ! In 
what other country would an order be 
possible forbidding all diplomatic agents 
of the government, in time of peace, to 
marry foreign wives ? 

In Paris there is none of this, little 
of it anywhere in France. In fact up to 
a recent date, true national sentiment has 
exposed itself to the risk of being called 
narrow and provincial. Recently the 
French waiters in Paris have complained 
of the overwhelming and unrestricted in- 
vasion of their trade by Germans, but 
without result. The complaint of the 
Parisian opera dancers, in view of the 
declining favor in which they were held 
beside the Russian and other foreign 
dancers, met only the reply that they must 
improve their performance and maintain 
the French superiority. Last year, to- 

38 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

ward the close of the musical year, a 
prominent daily paper said, in a spirit 
of banter: ^^Now that we have had a 
^Russian season,' and a ^Viennese season,' 
and ^Italian and American seasons,' there 
is nothing in the way of our hearing 
something French!" What Paris dress- 
maker would talk of excluding German 
or American models, and wiiat French 
artist would wish to forbid the importa- 
tion of German or Italian paintings or 
sculptures? The sort of national feeling 
that refuses hospitality to the best things, 
that fears competition with alien methods 
and ideas, that sets more store by the 
accidents of place and birth than by what 
is essential to the universal ideals of art 
and of humanity— this is not French. If 
anyone doubt this, he may question any 
typical Frenchman of education as to his 
feelings on hearing of the destruction of 
architectural monuments at Louvain and 
39 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

Eheims; or, to get a wider answer, con- 
sult the editorial opinions of the French 
newspapers of the dates of these occur- 
rences. He will find horror expressed and 
protest, it is true ; but not merely national 
horror, not merely protest in the name of 
Belgian or French art. Eather will he 
be impressed by the sentiment of uni- 
versal loss, of the outrage committed upon 
art as such, of the affront to human as- 
piration and the insult to the genius of 
the past. ^^Mon Dieu," says he, ^^c'est 
irreparable " — it cannot be replaced ! 
While from Germany comes the senti- 
ment: ^^What matters it, really? It 
is a pity, but we can make better 
ones!"^ 



^ I quote the following from the report made to the 
German government by its expert, Professor Paul 
Clemen, on the destruction of Rheims Cathedral (cited 
by M. Damilier, French sub-Secretary of Fine Arts) : 
"This extravagant worship of monuments is a strange 

40 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

None of the methods characteristic of 
a militant civilization, as we may call it, 
is tolerated among the French. They 
reject the idea that real culture can be 
imposed by requiring this or that mode 
of life or standard of taste, an idea 
which, in societies where it is cur- 
rent, betrays the reflection of mili- 
tary discipline into the moral life. 
How can free art, free science, free 
speech, live in an atmosphere in which 
the spontaneous activities of the indi- 
vidual, his impulses to live his life and 
express his opinions in the light of his 
conscience, are checked at every turn? 
In France, the wonderful development of 
the fine arts testifies to the absence of that 
mode of deference which refers all things 
to the over-lord, from the cut of the mus- 

sentimentality, and anachronism ... at a time when 
our existence and the victory or decline of German 
thought {Deutschen Denken) are at stake." 

41 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

tacMos to the genuineness of an antique 
statue. In the Third Eepublic the popular 
heroes have not been military men, but 
literary men— artists, dramatists, the 
laureates of the Academies, and the win- 
ners of the prix de Rome, The appear- 
ance of new books by Anatole France and 
Paul Bourget have been national events. 
The production of ^^Chantecler^' and the 
activities and death of Gaston Calmette 
touched the Paris of the time as much 
as the successful sorties made by the 
troops in Morocco. Whatever this may 
have meant— and for some time it be- 
trayed possibly a spirit too careless of the 
things of real national import, due to an 
ideology of liberalism rather than to a 
sound philosophy of society — it showed, 
without any doubt, that the military in- 
terest held no dominant place in the pub- 
lic mind. Just this state of things, indeed^ 
has led to the underestimation of the 
42 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

present strength, and also of the real 
patriotism of the French, in the minds of 
foreign critics who have not read the more 
recent signs of the times. 

Nowadays, while war is waging, the 
tristesse, the resigned patience of the 
people, is touching, pathetic. Theatrical 
performances, save of certain types, are 
forbidden; light music, gaiety in public 
places, modish dress, are not counte- 
nanced. Public sensibility revolts at the 
suggestion of lightness, in view of the 
usurpation of the resources of life by the 
fatalities of war. There is a moral elan, 
a desperate earnestness, a new hope, an 
enthusiasm for the cause ; and these give 
the assurance of victory. But there is 
also the shock to the feelings of a high- 
minded people who look forward to a 
long struggle against the tendencies to 
debasement and materialization of moral 
values which always follow war. ^^Alas, 
43 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

everything will have to be repaired," says 
a prominent writer. But over against 
this is the recognition of the new pur- 
pose, the spirit of self-mastery, of which 
I speak again just helow. Remarking 
upon such an unimportant incident as the 
hissing, at one of the theaters, of an 
actress who danced the tango, M. Alfred 
Capus says: ^^ Perhaps it will be one of 
the miracles of the war, under the favor- 
able conditions of victory, to have re- 
formed the public taste." I may cite in 
this connection two snatches of conversa- 
tion—almost at random. Early in the 
war I asked an officer whether the French 
aviators would follow the German ex- 
ample of dropping bombs upon unde- 
fended cities. ^^ Impossible," said he, 
*'nous ne sont pas des brutes!" I 
remember well the look on the face of a 
society woman on hearing it said that the 
theaters in Berlin were patronized as 

44 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

usual: ^*How can they," she said; ^*do 
they not mourn for their dead?" 

In another respect, France has shown 
herself for some years occupied with other 
things than armaments and military 
projects. I refer to the growth of a new 
idealism. 

Last winter a well-known English 
writer, Mr. J. E. C. Bodley, published 
an essay on ^^The Decay of Idealism in 
Prance,"^ from which he read extracts 
before the Academy of Moral Sciences. 
His point was, in effect, that the age of 
machinery, the mechanical age, had suc- 
ceeded the age of idealism; and that in 
France, as everywhere, there had been a 
materializing of the spiritual life, a de- 
cline in the force of ideals. The French 
answer to this, repeated many times in 
my hearing, and formally expressed by 

1 A chapter in Mr. Bodley's book, "Cardinal Manning 
and Other Essays." 

45 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

different writers (among them M. G. R. 
Levy, in the Revue Bleu) is always the 
same, as to the main point. The writers 
point out— as foreign observers, includ- 
ing myself, have done— that things have 
changed in the last decade. We have wit- 
nessed the commencement and positive 
growth of a new and fruitful idealism in 
France. It appears in practical life, in 
legislation, in public taste, in literature, 
philosophy, and religion. Practical signs 
of it are to be seen in the growth of 
stricter sentiments of personal and 
social morality, of temperance, of the 
limits of individual liberty, of the 
requirements of social solidarity and 
collective responsibility. The wide- 
spread discussion, focused in the 
Institute of France, of the alarming 
fall in the French birth rate, has 
shown this new spirit of public concern 
and awakened conscience. The same may 

46 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

be said in respect to the question of alco- 
holism. The abolition of absinthe is 
i^robably only the beginning of construc- 
tive temperance legislation. As to other 
legislation, a large body of measures of 
direct practical import has been before 
the Chamber of Deputies, and many of the 
most important have been enacted, those 
on gambling and illegitimacy being of 
great importance as signs of the move- 
ment of opinion. Many other things to 
which the extreme laissez faire theory of 
liberty, on the one hand, and equally ex- 
treme anti-clericalism, on the other hand, 
had given the respectability of popular 
tradition, are now frankl}^ criticized and 
condemned, among them, the extreme 
license formerly accorded to theatrical 
performances. 

In philosophy this new idealistic move- 
ment is taking the form, on the negative 
side, of a revolt from the positivism and 
47 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

naturalism of the late nineteenth century, 
and on the positive side, of a new intui- 
tionism allied with spiritual mysticism. 
This latter, the spiritual, assumes positive 
religious form, filling the churches with 
worshipers, if not with converts, and 
modifying the public attitude in such im- 
portant matters as laical education and 
the treatment of religious organizations. 
The change in the attitude of the press 
toward the church in the last decade has 
been most noteworthy. An analogous 
change in public taste and in those pur- 
veyors to it, the writers of popular liter- 
ature, shows itself in a note of 'moral 
severity and literary austerity. Since the 
outbreak of hostilities, articles have ap- 
peared in England and the United States 
suggesting that the war itself had served 
to produce in France a new devotion, a 
more united national purpose, a higher 
synthesis of spiritual values, a rebirth of 

48 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

the historical ideals of this great people ; 
and there can be no doubt that the fact 
of such a change has been made plain by 
the war. What an exhibition of unity, 
restraint, persistence, chivalry, truthful- 
ness, added to the ordinary military 
virtues of loyalty, bravery, heroism ! And 
on what a background— the usual canvas 
of war, painted over with figures which 
disgrace even the military life— brutality, 
license, hate, deceit, piracy ! How unspec- 
tacular, too, the French campaign has 
been. No blowing of bugles, waving of 
banners, or boasting of victories! And 
these are the people who, above all others, 
love the dramatic! 

But although the war came at a good 
time to emphasize and crystallize these 
motives, it did not produce them. The 
future student of national culture will find 
abundant evidence to show that the finest 
preparation for the war, the most con- 
49 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

vincing assurance of victory, lay not in 
the military equipment and armaments, 
not in the law of three years, not in the 
high financial credit of France, but in 
the moral purpose of the people, in their 
new view of life and duty. It lay in the 
national aspiration for a place in the 
brighter sun of world influence in litera- 
ture, art, and morals, which was gather- 
ing force and already seeking instruments 
of expression when the explosion of war 
startled it into self-consciousness. In a 
series of eloquent papers written before 
the war, M. Gabriel Hanotaux, formerly 
Minister of Foreign Affairs, himself one 
of the founders of French colonial policy, 
pointed out that in view of the apparent 
growth of German commercial interests 
in the Orient, it was France's true mis- 
sion to reassert in Eastern countries her 
ancient conquests in the higher things of 
the mind. 

50 



in 



Ill 



So much for the psychological and 
moral side of our topic. Let us now look 
very briefly at the political side: the 
existence and role of the triple entente. 

This is not a political paper ; a political 
discussion in detail would require minute 
quotations from state papers and diplo- 
matic utterances. I wish merely to point 
out that the existence of the triple en- 
tente had both its motive and its justifi- 
cation, so far as France was concerned, 
in the state of French opinion and feeling 
which I have described above. 

The theory of the ^^ balance of power" 
in Europe is expounded in many treatises 
on European politics. As long as one 
53 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

nation or combination of nations seems 
bent on aggression or territorial expan- 
sion, it is necessary that its power should 
be balanced by that of another combina- 
tion of equal military strength. This was 
the raison d'etre of the Franco-Russian 
alliance as negotiated by M. Delcasse. 
France was compelled to be ready to meet 
the German menace, which carried in it 
all the power of the triple alliance of 
Germany, Austria, and Italy. It is gen- 
erally believed that it was due to the acute 
dijolomatic insight of King Edward, that 
England entered potentially into this co- 
alition with France and Russia. It is 
admitted with practically no dissenting 
voice among international jurists, that 
the preservation of the European peace 
until now has been due to the creation of 
the balance between these two groups 
of allied powers. The utility of such a 
balance then is evident ; nothing could re- 

54 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

place it, so long as any one nation or 
coalition maintained armaments which 
threatened the security or existence of 
others. The only possible alternatives 
were disarmament, in whole or part, by 
common consent, or the establishment 
of some court of adjudication of inter- 
national disputes to take the place of 
war. 

In respect to both these directions-— 
proposals for disarmament and sugges- 
tions looking to the judicial settlement of 
disputes by the development of the Hague 
Tribunal into a true international court 
of justice— France has positively shown 
her pacific intentions again and again. 
While taking a somewhat secondary place, 
on account of her alliance with Russia 
France has almost uniformly supported 
the suggestions made by England and the 
United States, while in both alternative 
directions mentioned, Germany has con- 
55 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

sistently and always found means to hin- 
der progress or to block the way com- 
pletely.' One of the late cases of this, 
outside the sphere of the Hague Tribunal, 
was the rejection of the proposal of the 
British Admiralty for a ^^ naval holiday" 
—the cessation for a time of the building 
of battleships by the two countries.^ On 
certain occasions, when pacific sugges- 
tions failed of success, the utterances of 
German official personages have been of 
the most brutal frankness, extolling the 
sword as the arbiter of international dif- 
ferences, and war as the most effective 
means of argument. The Kaiser's *^ rat- 
tling of the sword," while the subject of 

^ According to Mr. Andrew Carnegie, France had six 
cases before the Hague tribunal, more than any other 
nation. The figures given by Mr. Carnegie are: France 
6, England 5, the United States 3, Germany 3. 

2 See the admirable brochure, "How Britain Strove 
for Peace, A Record of Anglo-German Negotiations, 
1898-1914," by Sir Edward Cook (Macmillan, 1914). 

56 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

humorous sarcasm across the ocean, has 
been serious enough on the continent, 
since it represented the colossal military 
machine now being used for the ends for 
which it was constructed. In France, on 
the contrary, there has been no war party, 
no pan-Franc campaign corresponding to 
that of the pan-Germanists, no military 
bureaucracy, serving the diffusion of 
Jingoism ; but a steady movement, led by 
men of the character of Baron d'Estour- 
nelle de Constant, in the direction of the 
establishment of international judicial 
institutions. The admirable efforts of Mr. 
Taf t, while president, to negotiate treaties 
covering all possible subjects of dispute, 
were seconded by England and France 
but rejected by Germany. It was reported 
that Germany gave a reluctant consent 
after the other treaties were prepared, but 
as a fact no treaty with Germany was 
presented to the American Senate. Even 

57 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

with the United States, Germany was un- 
willing to forego the future right to resort 
to the sword.^ 

All these external political signs pointed 
in the same direction. They gave formid- 
able body to the French fear of German 
aggression. They justified fully both the 
military preparation and the formation 
of the triple entente, considered as the 
means of preventing or checking such 
aggression. When the moment arrived 
and the pretext arose, it became evident 
that the voice of diplomacy, the cry of 
alarm of all Europe in the interests of 
millions of people, and the trumpet call 
of national honor, were together not to 

^ The suggestion made by the present writer, in an 
address before an American organization in Paris, of an 
"All- Atlantic Alliance," a moral affirmation by England, 
France, and the United States in the sense of Mr. Taft's 
treaties, was well received. The treatises, as presented 
to the Senate, only to meet defeat, practically amounted 
to such an affirmation. 

58 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

be sufficient to stay the fearful thing; it 
was to be, after all, the appeal to arms for 
which the nation trained in military 
science had always declared its preference. 
To France the menace turned in a day 
into the onrushing monster, and the triple 
entente showed itself the adequate defense 
provided by a wise and prudent foresight. 
For the attack took just the form that 
all the world had anticipated, a crushing 
blow at France. The first object of the 
war— the means to the ultimate end, if 
not that end itself —was the destruction 
of France, a means which doubled itself 
when this object required, as further 
means, the violation of Belgium. 

Was ever a people better justified in 
the maintenance of an army and navy, in 
the deliberate adoption of the machinery 
of a military state, than twentieth century 
France ? What else could have prevailed 
against the German sword ? It is written : 

59 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

**He that taketh the sword shall perish 
by the sword." 

It is now plain, I think, that the Ger- 
man menace, taking on acute form in 
1905, has meant to the French the immi- 
nent danger of war. Not desire for re- 
venge, not military ambition, has finally 
led them into it, but the necessity of na- 
tional defense, combined with a duty to the 
public right of Europe. To England, the 
latter, the duty was urgent only when 
the moment came; to France, both the 
duty and the necessity were immediate. 

The attitude of the French people in 
this war is well summarized, in my 
opinion, in the following words spoken by 
a man now high in the counsels of State : 
*^The war, to all good Frenchmen, a ne- 
cessity to face, a duty to fulfill— but with 
what heaviness of heart (dans le coeur du 
vrai frangais, quelle lourde tristesse) !" 

60 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

M. Viviani, the Premier, closes his patri- 
otic New Year's address to the Chamber 
of Deputies with these words :^ 

"If this contest is the most gigantic ever recorded 
in history, it is not because the people are hurling them- 
selves into warfare to conquer territory, to win enlarge- 
ment of material life, and economic and political ad- 
vantages, but because they are struggling to determine 
the fate of the world. Nothing greater has ever 
appeared before the vision of man. That is the stake. 
It is greater than our lives. Let us continue then to 
have but one united spirit, and tomorrow, in the peace 
of victory, we will recall with pride these days of 
tragedy, for they will have made us more valorous and 
better men." 

As to the future, no one can prophesy; 
we must await the course of events. A 
recent book, full of fine analysis and able 
criticism, ^^ France Herself Again,'' ^ by 

^Journal Officiel, Dec. 23, 1914. 

2 In this book, issued too late to be utilized in my 
paper, I find conclusions strikingly similar to those 
expressed here. I commend the book to English and 
American readers. (New York and London, Putnam.) 
A remarkable lecture, analyzing the practical and moral 

61 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

M. Ernest Dimnet, gives reasons for 
thinking that the factors of reform and 
vigor will dominate those of political dis- 
ruption which, in his opinion, are the 
cause of most of the social complaints of 
the past. I believe his optimism is fully- 
justified, the more because there are rea- 
sons for thinking that his indictment of 
the democratic regime, apart from the 
character of some of its politicians, is 
somewhat severe. M. Henri Bergson, 
commenting upon the recent excellent 
book of M. Charles Heyraud, ^'La France 
de demain," pronounces this eloquent ver- 
dict : * * The difficulties which our theories 
labored so painfully to resolve, have been 
overcome by action— the action in which 
France is just now engaged. The diseases 
which we ourselves discovered, and for 

effects of the war, has been published by M. E. Bou- 
trou, entitled "La Guerre et la Vie de demain," Revue 
Bleu, 16-23, Jan, 1915. 



FRANCE AND THE WAR 

wMcli each of us proposed a remedy, have 
not lasted to be cured ; they have been sup- 
pressed by the sheer uplift of our vitality. 
Internal dissensions, depopulation, alco- 
holism, what will remain of all this tomor- 
row if our elan be maintained? From 
now on France will be able to say, with 
one of her own great poets: 

*Le mal dont j'ai souffert s'est enfui comme un reve/ " ^ 



^ From M. Bergson's "President's Address/' Decem- 
ber 12, 1914, before the Academie des Sciences morales 
et politiques. 

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